When you look at City 5s' other results: 7-0 6-0 10-0 15-0, you have to worry that you'll be beaten as severely as the rest of them. Pre-season the 5s were on the end of that 7-0 thrashing (Not really the best friendly to have but at least it gave some warning to the calibre of the team we faced at the weekend) and so going into the game a good result would've been to simple lose by less than previously and a great result would've been to hold them off and keep our heads high until the end. A miracle would've been to score an actual goal against this side. Unfortunately we didn't get a goal, but we certainly held them off and kept the scoreline sensible. 

The squad was a barebones 11 men, which would factor in later in the game with our fitness against a 13 man squad of youths. However all the positions were filled, we had a goalie, some defenders, some midfielders and a striker or two, the original plan had been to dig in with a 4-5-1 formation because city like to play with no goal keeper, and a formation of 3-5-3, but our fears of being dominated from the off-set were quelled by the sight of a lad padding up after being denied his lie-in. 

The game started really well, we reverted back to 4-4-2 and played our usual game, but with the knowledge that these players were to be taken seriously at all times. In the first 10 minutes were were actually controlling most of the possession, we entered their D before they found ours and there was fluid passing between the midfield and the attacks, nothing really came about from the attacks but the pressure was excellent. The defence had to fight off a couple of attacks early on, but the composure was excellent and the midfield were coming back very quickly for set-plays. John S and David were doing well to track their wingers as they came down the sides and preventing them from crossing in. James S and Tom were stopping attacks and clearing the ball. Rob was doing really well in goal - on one occasion he saved a shot with his chest which sat nicely for James S to smash it out to the opposition's baseline. We managed to fend off multiple short corners - one was deflected out wide by Tom, Rob saved one and David stopped a shot on the line with his stick. 

The midfield were working really well too, James B was fooling the youngsters with his years of experience, he (as they would say) skinned (youth speak for beating a player to the point of making him look silly) them multiple times, honestly it was pretty great to seem them beaten for a change. Wilco was really strong in the middle - providing most of the balls to the attackers, but also chasing back to nick balls off the City attackers. Owen and James M on the wings were harassing their players constantly, the work rate was astonishing, they rarely gave up chasing down balls and players. Really excellent stuff. John G and Andy were also playing really well upfront, John especially was worrying their defence, but also popping up when their midfield hesitated too long on the ball to rob possession. Andy was making good runs into the D and causing City to actually mark and defend.

Eventually they scored though, after 30 minutes of battling they managed to squeeze an excellent reverse side hit into the goal, this wasn't a crushing blow to our confidence though. We had prevented them from scoring for 30 minutes and had pretty much equal possession, we hadn't been hiding in our own half under a barrage of attacks - we had held our own against City 5s.

Inevitably the second half led to a few more goals from City - they looked frustrated at their lack of dominance in the first half, of course they managed to change that relatively quickly. They pushed up more players into attack and created a lot of opportunities, however only 1 more goal came from open play. 3 of their goals came from short corners, 1 went though the tiniest gap in Rob's pads, another bounced off James S's stick on the line and a third found the net easily - it seemed they'd found their short corner mojo. Another goal came from a penalty flick after John S unavoidably blocked a shot with his shoulder on the line. Rob did valiantly but they clearly practiced flicks as the player found the top corner with ease. Regardless of these goals the defence were doing really well to hold back an onslaught of attacks - and because they were pressing forward so much we managed to counter attack easily, with John coming closest to scoring with a great shot that was cruelly blocked on the line. Another interesting moment came when Tom nearly scored an own goal when he deflected a cross towards the far corner, but Rob's super-human reflexes prevented embarrassment and possible Lemon votes for the stand-in captain. 

They finally got their 6th goal - i honestly don't remember how and the whistle blew for full-time. This was by far the most enjoyable defeat i've played in for a while - we lost, but we fought hard, we didn't drop our heads and we kept our composure, none of the goals were from rubbish defending - we were just outplayed by skilful young players. 

James S won the MoM for excellent defending and organising everyone when we were defending. There were also nominations for Tom, Rob, Owen, James B and David B but in my opinion everyone played to an excellent standard and really showed that the 5s aren't a walk-over team in this league and hopefully the next few games will prove that. 

Bring on St. Neots 4s!